Hungry Ghost: Yearning For Fulfillment

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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

A dynamic exhibition highlighting the work of 38 visual and literary artists. The exhibit features essays, illustrations, mixed media installations, paintings, photography, poetry and sculpture.

The Hungry Ghost, a concept based in Buddhist and Taoist beliefs, is a lost soul that roams burdened by unmet needs. Driven by insatiable greed and intense desires, the Hungry Ghost wanders, searches and feeds. In Chinese folk religion, families prepare food offerings for deceased relatives to keep ancestral hungry ghosts at bay.

Hungry Ghost: Yearning for Fulfillment asks Asian American women artists to interpret and illuminate this powerful, culturally rich metaphor. How do Asian American women artists express deep emotional and physical desires? How do we relate to the idea of isolation and alienation? How do we reconcile our Asian backgrounds and American surroundings? How do food and family shape our identity? How do we deal with consumption and compulsion? How do we crave acceptance and fulfillment? What feeds us?

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Lisa Chiu is a Taiwanese American writer and food fanatic. Her essays appear in the anthologies Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women (2007) and Who’s Your Mama?: The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (2009). A staff member of Literary Mama, Lisa enjoys being part of a worldwide community of talented women writers. Her interest in curation stems from a desire to cultivate creative opportunities that foster cultural awareness. She conceived Hungry Ghost as a forum to amplify Asian American women’s voices and showcase their art. Lisa has a B.A. in English from Case Western Reserve University and an M.A. in journalism from The Ohio State University.